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Pitch Perfect Penguins

My daughters love the movie Pitch Perfect. I suspect our XBMC has
played it more than 100 times, and I'm not exaggerating. Whether or not you enjoy
young-adult movies about singing competitions and cartoon-like projectile
vomiting, I'll admit it's a pretty fun movie. The question my
girls ask me most often is about the audio-mixing software the
protagonist uses to make her "sick beats".

Although Anna Kendrick uses a Macintosh in the movie, and the software's
name is obscured or changed in close-ups, it's easy to tell the software
she uses is Mixxx. The cool part for me is that while indeed Mixxx works
on OS X, it's an open-source application that works natively in Linux as
well. That means, in the eyes of my daughters, Linux is now super-cool.

Mixxx is an editing package with incredible visual tools. It's
designed to "mix" several songs or rhythm tracks and export a completed
song. The very nice GUI makes mixing audio easy to understand, and the
interface itself is apparently cool enough for Hollywood. So whether you
want to make your own "wicked tracks" or join an
a cappella group, Mixxx is just the tool for you. Also, I recommend watching
Pitch Perfect, one or two of those XBMC viewings might have been my own!

Shawn is Associate Editor here at Linux Journal, and has been around Linux since the beginning. He has a passion for open source, and he loves to teach. He also drinks too much coffee, which often shows in his writing. You can contact Shawn via e-mail, ljeditor@linuxjournal.com.